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When Complicity Becomes An Affront :: (Howard S. Emanuel)Article relating to this countries Union Movement.... By Howard S. Emanuel - 14th May 2006 - Back to News 
WHEN COMPLICITY BECOMES AN AFFRONT.
As much as anyone, I applaud and indeed celebrate the contribution the union movement has made to Australian life in the past 100 years. Without this titan effort the lives of "average" Australians would more accurately mirror the slavish lifestyles endured by a great many members of the underprivileged classes in England.
Union activity and importantly action has kept at bay the rampant greed and ignorance that hallmarks and portends big business. Working people now enjoy at least a modicum of dignity in their lives.
But I cringed and I shook with disbelief when I heard union officials recently threaten to among other things, "take the fight up to Howard" on the Industrial Relations reforms. These pronouncements frankly beggar belief
Wake up, its all too late, the battle has been lost, the laws are made, the faculty will now feel the heat and it is you, yes you who must shoulder the blame. Because it is you, the union movement who have refused to even consider the ongoing merit and worth of the relationship between yourself and your mutant offspring, the Australian Labor Party. For too long you have sat back and watched a jaundiced, bellicose and malfunctioning body turn its back on its constituents, you have stood by in the naive belief that "soon they will return to the fold".
For goodness sake the ALP at federal level is a spent force in Australian politics and has been for some time. They have at best 10 to 15 years left. The poison runs too deep, new apparatchiks imbibe the soured milk of their forebears and their behaviour only worsens and becomes more facile. How many remakes, how many leadership changes, how many policy (remember policy) reviews, how many Hawke and Wran reviews. How many new" rising stars", how many "the next generation of Labor leaders". They are all the same, all of the one school. It’s over.
The unions no longer have control of the Labor Party. And yet it is fundamental to all that the union movement has become to retain the primary stake in the ALP, otherwise we return to the time when the unions had no parliamentary presence. We should remember, the Labor Party was born from the Union movement to ensure that the needs of the less well-off could be fought for in the decision making processes of this country, at least somewhat on equal grounds.
The unions as well in recent times have suffered a dramatic loss of membership for several reasons, not the least being that they have become irrelevant to many in the community. Irrelevant not only because in a economic sense Australia has been in the midst of prosperous times for the last decade or so and many are more comfortable than previous, but also irrelevant because their political wing the ALP has become unelectable and therefore immaterial to the needs of those left behind by Australia’s "economic miracle". These people are the very ones that now suffer the onslaughts of the nations new IR laws. In a mammoth irony many of these folk are so despairing at the lack of capacity within the ALP to deliver their lot, that they have thrown their hats in with the Howard government and buttress against hard times through increased child payments, Family Tax Benefits, baby bonuses and the like.
Unions can be contradictory bodies at times. On one hand they bespeak of social progress and a unification of all peoples. On the other they rigidly adhere to the manifesto of the "working classes", they play the role of the victim, they wear the grimace of the downtrodden and by these actions they create a separate class who are supposedly unable or incapable of acting for themselves. Because of this many in the middle classes in this country levy their jest at the "workers" and talk above them on the consideration that they are incapable of fighting back.
Many in the union movement have little life experience outside of the movement. They are immersed in a monoculture and yet they desire to create an equitable society, a society that is made of up of a millennium of life experiences, that is people from all walks. You cannot develop a way forward for us all when you lack an understanding of where we currently are.
Unions can sometimes seem more about division that unity. The days of the "worker versus the rest" are over, the new mantra should be working toward equality and that means respecting the rights of those we may disagree with, including people of an conservative ilk. Open up the unions to free thinkers and see if they can’t go forward. Some of the shibboleths will have to go though, including the factions and the leadership.
The ALP though has been dealt a huge disservice by its factional system, as has the union movement. Factions are more about toadyism, acolytes and security rather than the uncertainties of new ideas and leadership. Factions support those that toe the line. Leaders are not born out of this type of climate. A great many in the broader Labor movement bemoan the effect the factions have on the body, yet as usual they commentate and fail to act, because above all else self interest rules supreme. Some degree of comfort is better than none they reason.
Remembering back to the early images that I first confronted of union agitation, I remember that these people seemed to be perpetually angry, capable of violence and always blaming someone for their angst. There is much discourse on the divisions in society these days but it is not just along economic lines, the divisions exist in a much deeper vein. They exist at the level of our relationships with each other, that we lack the understanding of compromise, that we fail to ever turn the other cheek. It seems to me that the mantra of the Labor movement these days is to bludgeon into submission, to subdue by any means.
And that brings into light a very moot point, these tactics are employed specifically because the ALP and the unions fight every campaign on a rear-guard action, they are on the back foot before the opening salvo. And why? Because they allow the conservative political parties to set the agenda, to lead the debate then find themselves merely subjugated to the role of sniping from the sidelines, to the inane response and then wonder why people are contemptuous of them.
If the unions really had what we are told are a "new generation of Labor Leaders" in their fold, they would have shown their hand before now and unloaded their saddle bags full of new ideas for all to see, for many to respect. Instead we are supposed to believe that once they enter parliament (via a safe seat of course), they will then suddenly morph into fonts of wisdom and knowledge that will take us all forward. If the duplicity and obfuscation were not so obscene, it would be, frankly laughable.
Consider that the Labor movement has itself been sucked into the vortex of modern Australian values, that is that economic prosperity can lead to emancipation and fulfilment for all, can indeed lead to a progressive social future. That is demonstrably not the case. It was once the vanguard of the non-conservatives in this country to set up a progressive social agenda to demonstrate that lasting unity can only be built on a bedrock of mutual respect for each other and all. And yet the folly of throwing money at the many problems in this country has a new devotee, the union movement.
The development of strong social and economic policy, as difficult a marriage as this can be can lead to benefits for all, can achieve more than naked aggression and deliver a sense of communal harmony that this country currently does not enjoy. Attributable social conditions can engender a sense of security above that which can be offered by economic gains alone. Consider the many in the community that at present vote for the Howard government for reasons of economic security, and yet know deep in their hearts that this should not and cannot go on. Iraq, Refugees, Telstra, A broad privatisation agenda, Student unions, IR reforms, etc etc, all these issues leave a deep stain, indeed a scar.
It is the place of a progressive Labor movement to ensure that these policies never become law, never have the capacity to shame a great many of us. And yet the ALP, the parliamentary political wing of the unions has failed not only to take office at a federal level for the past 4 elections, it has now become such a diminutive player in Australian politics and a laughing stock in the minds of the people, it has effectively handed by default the Howard government a Senate majority, read license, to propagate the seeds of division and become a ideologically driven authority rather than an elected political party.
The union movement has failed the Australian people by propping up a dysfunctional opposition that has disenfranchised itself from the Australian people and has allowed the Howard government to rule supreme, unchallenged by any real and credible alternative.
It is not so much the fault of the Howard government that we now have these regressive IR laws enacted and enshrined, after all that is their want, it is the fault of the union movement who lack the courage to see and recognise the truth. The ALP is dead and a new body; a new collective is needed to protect the vulnerable from the ravages of ideology. Justice is the goal, it is the cause which belongs to the people, it is not the exclusive property of any group or organisation.
Wake up Union movement, fess up and get on with it, before a 5th term Howard government brings us deeper into conflict with ourselves. Your naivety, your lack of nous and your palpable lack of any capacity to move beyond your comfortable but flawed relationship with the ALP has indeed become such an affront to so many, that your seminal contribution to Australian life risks being tarnished, if not lost forever.
Your leadership is outdated and too strongly welded to the belief that the strategies of the 20th century remain relevant in the 21st. Forget the brawn; forget the muscle these are indeed anathema to all you espouse. Get smart, get thinking, get real or for the benefit of all us, get out.
The union movement must at this juncture, given the parlous decline in democracy that has occurred make up their minds whether to stay with the essentially bankrupt Labor Party and hope that decency and courage prevails. Or preferably, put some real effort into consideration of the need to stimulate the genesis of a new parliamentary appendage that serves its needs and does not mutate into all that it is supposedly contemptuous of.
If those in the leadership of the Labor movement cannot possibly even conceive of this move I think that speaks volumes for their capacity to lead any of us anywhere but into deeper strife and further under the heel of those that believe they were born to rule.
No more excuses, no more scapegoats, no more reviews (god help us), no more chest thumping, the next challenge is yours and this one must be won.
Sincerely,
Howard Emanuel
Tele: (03) 5684 1561
Mobile: 0400 158 896
E-mail: howard@howardemanuel.com
Web: www.HowardEmanuel.com
Source: http://gippsland.com/ Published by: howard-emanuel@hotmail.com
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